How to sell fitness programs & workout plans (examples + useful tips)
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Staying fit and healthy hardly ever went out of style.
So, whether you are a personal trainer, CrossFit instructor, health and wellness coach, nutritionist, yoga guru, or anything in between, you must’ve faced a situation when you simply run out of time and can’t take on more clients or classes.
But what if I told you that you could continue sharing your passion for fitness while making a solid passive income?
Selling your fitness products online can not only help you grow your fitness business but also earn more money without meeting your clients face-to-face at the gym.
Ready to break some sweat? Let’s jump squat right in, and learn how to create and sell workout plans and fitness programs online.
How much money can you make selling workout programs?
How much you can make with your digital fitness products depends on several factors like the size of your audience, niche specifics, etc.
But! Here’s the real beauty of creating a passive income with digital products:
Whatever the amount that you earn, you’ll get it on top of what you’re already making as a personal trainer.
For instance, here are some real numbers from fitness instructors and nutrition experts that sell workout programs and meal plans on Sellfy:
Let me do the math for you:
This sums up to an average of $4K+ pure income per month. Not too shabby, right?
Plus, the online fitness market is projected to grow by 30% annually up until 2026. So the market is clearly there and will continue to grow for at least five years.
Wait for it, there’s more:
A lot more people now are actually ready to pay for educational content.
According to the report by VICE media, 90% of Generation Z is willing to pay for access to online content they can’t get elsewhere. And, in a post-COVID world, it’s become a growing trend for older generations too.
How to sell fitness programs and workout plans
Creating and selling online fitness classes doesn’t have to be complicated. All you have to do is follow a few simple steps: decide on the type of product you’re selling, find a platform to host your fitness classes on, upload your products, and finally come up with appropriate pricing.
Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty and pick these steps apart in more detail.
Step 1. Create your workout plans and online training programs
One of the first (and also one of the most important) steps to selling workout plans online is to decide what type of products you’re going to sell.
I trust that most of you already are professional fitness instructors or have years of experience that you’re ready to share with your audience.
However, to create an online fitness studio, you must know how to turn your knowledge into a product that your audience is willing to pay for.
So before we dive into the specifics of selling per se, let’s take a look at the types of digital fitness products there are.
1. Downloadable PDF workout programs and meal plans
Selling workout programs as PDFs is an excellent example of an evergreen fitness product that can help you build steady passive income.
The best part is that you don’t need a lot to start. All it takes is putting your existing knowledge together in an organized way, a well-designed PDF file, and an easy-to-use eCommerce platform for selling digital files.
Example:
As a mother of four, Ashley Keller was always frustrated by the lack of challenging parental workouts available online. That’s when she first got the idea about GlowBodyPT. Later she got certified as a Personal Trainer and Prenatal & Postnatal Exercise Specialist, dug into peer-reviewed research, and started crafting her own workout routines.
Now, she’s not only helping her 100K+ YouTube audience to get in shape, but she’s also successfully selling post-natal PDF workout programs and meal plans on her Sellfy store.
2. Online fitness courses and bundles
If you’re looking to sell workout videos, you can turn them into online fitness classes or transformation programs.
That’s exactly what Ron Jones does. He’s a personal trainer and a Sellfy creator that’s managed to combine personal fitness training with mental health techniques to offer a truly unique experience to his customers. This way he has successfully brought his personal training online by selling a 5-week program in his Sellfy store. His $197 program provides gym as well as home workouts to beginners of all age groups.
3. Workout subscriptions
The idea is to offer a product that will require your customers to pay a recurring monthly/yearly subscription fee.
The best part?
Recurring income means that you’ll have more control over how much you earn. Plus, it’s much easier to retain customers as long as they’ve already subscribed.
With subscription-based products, you won’t have to constantly come up with new products as you can update the existing ones in real-time.
Example:
Emilio Born knows that the hardest part of achieving your fitness goals is to start doing something. That is why is so important to do it with someone who really cares about you. So, being a professional fitness trainer he decided to help his audience to destroy the entry barriers with a 12-week transformation plan.
He goes one step further by customizing the plan for each customer separately by asking you to fill in a questionnaire before you get access to:
- Video workout routines
- Meal plans
- Weekly check-ins
Plus, you could still offer 1-on-1 online sessions for customers that are feeling that they need special attention. Our friend Ron Jones offers this service on his Sellfy’s fitness studio for $79.99 USD.
Step 2. Choose your monetization strategy
Essentially, there are two types of digital fitness products that you can sell:
- Transactional (digital downloads).
- Subscription-based (online memberships).
Let’s see how they work.
Transactional
Selling digital downloads is more suitable for professionals who have a particular knowledge set or have a specific idea for a product in mind.
For example:
- PDF training programs.
- Meal plans.
- Exercise videos
- Recovery tips.
- Stretching routines
- eBooks
Subscription-based
With subscriptions, you can offer your customers a selection of products like workout and cooking videos, written materials, and other material for a set monthly/yearly fee. The more people subscribe, the more your income grows. You can also create membership levels to attract more clients.
While both business models have their pros and cons, it doesn’t mean that you have to choose just one of them and completely ignore the other. Instead, you can use a tool like Sellfy to offer various types of products including digital and physical goods, subscriptions, video on demand, and even print on demand.
Step 3. Build your online store with Sellfy
We’ve already looked into the types of products that you can sell and established that it’s better to combine several monetization strategies. So, if you’re looking to sell workout programs online, it’s better to choose a platform that supports not only digital downloads but also subscriptions and VOD.
Hands down, an eCommerce store is the most obvious choice if you’re looking for a simple way to kick-start your fitness business. Plus, with Sellfy, you can forget about hidden fees or regulations.
Sellfy has everything you need to build an online fitness business:
- Your own online store.
- An integration to help you sell fitness products online with PayPal.
- Support for digital, physician, and subscription products.
- Possibility to sell videos as digital downloads and VOD.
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth.
- Pre-designed store themes and an intuitive Store Customizer.
- Store embed options.
- Clean checkout process.
- Built-in marketing tools.
- 24/7 technical support.
With all that and much more, you can easily create a professional website with a clear and simple checkout.
Here’s how to sell fitness programs and workout plans with Sellfy:
- All you need to create an account with Sellfy is a valid email address. You can start with a 14-day free trial before upgrading to one of three subscription plans (Starter, Business, or premium).
- Once you’ve created an account, you can start uploading your digital products. You just need to drag & drop a file onto the upload area and choose if you want your product to be downloadable, streamable, or both. Then you need to set a price, hit the Save product button, and your product will be live in your Sellfy store!
- One final step before you can start selling your fitness products and workout plans is to connect payment gateways. Sellfy works with two major payment processors:
- Stripe — to collect payments from any major credit card, Apple Pay, or Google pay.
- PayPal — to collect payments made through a PayPal account, all major credit cards, or local European payment methods.
Step 4. Upload and sort your products
I’ve already mentioned that uploading your fitness products to a Sellfy store is a five-finger exercise.
However, you just have to be smart about presenting it the right way.
Here are a few quick tips that can instantly make your product look better:
- Include customer testimonials to build credibility.
- Add a detailed description of what your client will get.
- List the equipment your clients will need to perform the exercises.
- Include any possible additional materials that can increase the value of your product.
But the real trick to ensure the potential clients that you offer exactly what they need is to make your content accessible and organize it in a logical way.
Here’s how you can do it:
1. Separate your products into categories
With each step that your customer has to take in order to find what they’re looking you’re losing chances to win them as a paying client.
Dividing your products into categories is the crucial step in organizing your content. The key here is to not overthink it and just keep it clear and simple.
2. Highlight best-selling products and newest arrivals
As a fitness instructor, influencer, or even a fitness model, you’ll (most probably) attract the majority of your customers through platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. It means that most people who will come to your online fitness studio will know exactly what they’re looking for.
But it doesn’t mean that you should forget about the first-time visitors. Wouldn’t you want to win over some new customers by featuring some of your best-sellers?
3. Make sure to make your free products visible
If you offer free content in your store, you have to make sure that it’s visible to everyone. Your free content might be the key to getting more paying in the future. Plus, sharing free content with your audience is an excellent way to grow your email list.
Step 5. Price your fitness products
There are tons of serious research done on the matter of deciding how much creators should charge for the products they’re selling online.
But, I’ve managed to filter it down to three big steps to coming up with perfect pricing:
1. Check out what other fitness instructors are charging.
This step requires you to research your competitors. It allows you to come up with a benchmark for your product pricing.
Example:
I’ve done small research for you and looked into how Sellfy fitness instructors are pricing their products:
- PDF workout plans and meal plans: $10-20 for condensed materials, $20-50 for eBooks.
- Fitness video courses and bundles: $80-200 for a 5-12 week program.
Taking this into consideration, you can choose to price somewhere in between these ranges, and then make adjustments depending on your sales.
2. Count in costs and expenses
This is the most straightforward way to determine the price of your product as you have to calculate the actual production and distribution costs.
This step doesn’t involve any market research. But, you still need to be extra careful to count in all expenses, including the time you’ve spent creating them. Otherwise, you’re risking ending up underselling your products or services.
For example, for personal trainers expenses may include things like:
- Training courses
- First aid certification
- Equipment
- Marketing
- Taxes
3. Decide how much you want to earn before pricing
Here you need to turn on a goal-oriented mindset, where you decide on the end result, and then work out what’s needed to achieve it by creating an offering that’s worth the money.
Example:
Imagine that you’ve estimated the production cost of your product to be around $30. According to the size of your audience and previous experience, you know that you can sell around 20-25 products per month, but you wouldn’t want to earn less than $1,000/month. It means that you have to add a 50% profit margin and charge $45 in total.
Connect with your audience: build your personal brand
The key to becoming successful in the fitness industry is building a strong community.
That’s why your personal brand and building an audience should be an integral part of your marketing strategy.
I trust that most of you have already stepped on the yellow brick road of building an online presence. But, some of the successful Sellfy sellers are ready to share useful tips on how to integrate your social media channels into your marketing strategy.
It’s hard to imagine any fitness business (online or offline) without an Instagram profile with some kick-ass physique visuals or some transformation content.
Here are some tips on driving more sales with your Instagram:
Show that your products are working.
As a personal trainer, the best thing you can do to promote your fitness program or workout plan is by showing honest results to your audience.
For example, you could ask a few of your clients to make before and after pictures of their progress after following your workout routine.
The key is to always have your client’s consent to use photos or videos of them as your progress posts.
And never (ever) manipulate the visuals. Trust me, people will know! Plus, being honest and open, will eventually help you build more trust with your audience.
Use IG stories and Highlights to promote your products.
With 500 million daily users worldwide, Instagram Stories is your best friend when it comes to growing your online personal training business.
Here’s what you can do with Instagram Stories:
- Capture your products in action and show your daily life
- Promote special offers
- Showcase new products
- Go behind the scenes to show how other people are using your products
Try Instagram Shopping
In short, Instagram Shopping allows you to transport your online store onto your Instagram profile by tagging products directly in the posts. This way you give your customers access to pricing and product details.
Here’s what makes Instagram Shopping great:
- Customers can explore your products with a single tap.
- You can share the post on Explore page and reach a new audience.
- It’s possible to tag up to 5 products per image (20 products per carousel).
- Customers can tap “Shop now” to visit your website and complete their purchases.
- From the Insights tab, you can see how different posts are performing
YouTube
If you’re planning to sell workout videos, the chances are pretty high that you have already tested the waters with a personal YouTube channel.
While YouTube is not the best platform for video monetization, it’s most certainly a great tool for growing your audience. Plus, you can use YouTube to drive traffic to your online store by:
- Adding links in the description & comments
- Using the video end screen to link to your online store
- Adding a custom link to your profile banner
- Setting up cards to drive more traffic to your site
Moreover, you could test your new videos through YouTube to see what content is more popular among your audience before adding them to your product selection.
TikTok
TikTok is simply a groundbreaking phenomenon that has changed the world of video content forever. Its unique algorithms have made it possible for personal trainers and fitness instructors to reach new audiences and get thousands, if not millions, new followers in a surprisingly short period of time.
Find your personal TikTok style
The great thing about TikTok is that it’s not like… well… anything else. It means that the videos you create can be fairly casual and sometimes even entertaining. Forget about trying to look or be perfect—you can show your personality!
It means that you can literally be wearing Hello Kitty training shoes while giving useful tips on increasing your weight.
Use TikTok for unique knowledge sharing
TikTok is meant for watching and creating videos. I bet y’all know the most popular types of videos that tend to pop up on your “For you” page.
What a lot of people are looking for on TikTok are small, bite-sized pieces of useful information. So, consider all the nuggets of information your clients are shocked to learn, and then choose a TikTok-friendly way to share them.
Check out other fitness content
Making a video for TikTok is not rocket science — just click on the “+” icon at the bottom of the screen and begin recording.
But, if you’re a little unsure of where to begin or what to post first, start by exploring the app and checking out other fitness content. Trust me, you’ll be surprised by the variety of ways that fitness creators are using TikTok.
It doesn’t mean that you have to copy someone’s content. But it can help you shape your style.
Are you ready to start your online fitness business?
Selling workout programs online is an excellent way to earn money online while reaching new audiences. Now you know exactly how to launch an online fitness studio, sell fitness programs online, and scale your business.
To learn more about making money with digital, physical, and print-on-demand products, make sure to check out our blog for useful tips and tricks.
FAQ
Can you sell workout plans without being certified?
Of course, it is possible! But it still requires a decent amount of knowledge and experience to come up with a workout plan that will actually work. Plus, the bigger your audience the more chances you have to sell your fitness programs. So, we’d recommend that you only consider doing this if you have at least some prior experience.
Where can I sell my workout plans?
The best way to sell your workout plans and fitness programs are to create your own online store on a platform that supports digital, physical, and subscription products as well as VOD. If you’re looking for an effortless way to start an eCommerce business, you’ll find Sellfy a perfect fit. With Sellfy, it will take you less than 10 minutes to bring your fitness business online.
Can I make money selling training programs and workout plans?
You absolutely can! There are various ways to make money as a fitness instructor, but creating and selling workouts online is one of the most popular for professionals to build a passive income stream. You’d be surprised, but an online fitness coach with an average audience can easily make $4000 a month by selling their programs online.
